


aim for dark sky

by keithsforeheadtattoo



Category: Left 4 Dead, Left 4 Dead 2
Genre: Gen, Gender Issues, Gender Roles, M/M, Nonbinary Character, Trans, Trans Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-26
Updated: 2015-08-26
Packaged: 2018-04-27 13:19:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5050096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keithsforeheadtattoo/pseuds/keithsforeheadtattoo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>zoey goes shooting with her dad and imagines the paper target with the face of her shithead P.E. teacher. thinks of the locker rooms and it's bullseyes every time.</p><p>  <b>eight short vignettes alternately titled "maybe only cis people became zombies"</b></p>
            </blockquote>





	aim for dark sky

**Author's Note:**

> CONTENT WARNING for reference to misgendering/deadnaming, allusions to dysphoria  
>   
> also DISCLAIMER re: the fact that i as the author am Not A Cis (but also am obvi not the emperor of gender feel free to drag my ass if any/all of this is problematic)

louis grins like a flashlight, still crouched behind a potted plant. he'd expected "what?", like always. or "i hate pronouns". 

francis said "oh, right on." then "reloading!"

\- - -

"wedding dress. crying." nick elbows dead jaw out of his fucking way. "this brings back some bad memories."

he was a wreck from the start of the first fitting, ma told him halfway through to get his shit together cuz she was running out of napkins and replacement mascara. the nervous attendant picked out a lineup of thick veils. 

"i love you too, babe," paul said on the day of, like that's what nick had meant when he started bawling so bad his hands shook.

\- - -

it takes, like, a triple-digit number of miles before any of the big loud gender jokes even break the surface, apparently. bill's gotta know, or at least know something, cuz francis remembers making a lot of that face he makes when people try and "sir" him, and then not having to do it anymore after the diatribe he had about the bathrooms. not to mention, he thinks later, there's no other way bill would have put up with him flitting between the two entrance doors for multiple minutes. a hundred paces before, bill picked zoey up over his shoulder because her putting her shoe back on would've killed too much time. 

"you ever been to a cookout, kid?" francis says when zoey finally asks. he knew it would be her just cuz she's the smartest. "like, where everybody keeps goddamn asking if you want the ribs or the steak?"

"i'm a vegetarian," says zoey. 

"yeah," says francis.

\- - -

she just paid her mortgage off. like, RIGHT before. she just made what she was determined to call her final coffee run for anyone not directly responsible for paying her salary. they were gonna put her on the air. she had a god damn suit jacket the same color as her favorite skirt picked out and ironed. rochelle thinks about the suit as she wrings a mix of blood and vomit out of the hem of her t-shirt. of course. of fucking course. she's gonna get to anchor, she's gonna get to fucking do it, and the dead rise up and eat the earth first. 

\- - -

"wow," he breathes.

ellis squirms like he's shaking the stare off so keith goes victorian, makes eyes at his ankles.

"i meant like a good one," keith clarifies, or the gravel in his voice does, he hasn't been able to mask it since they punched the clock and ellis started wrenching hungry at uniform zippers. "sorry, man, i'm sorry."

"i'm fine. uh, you just seen it all before is all." ellis mumbles. he's already halfway buried into keith's hair and skin and a quilt his mama stitched together pregnant with him, squares and squares of fraying bows. keith runs his hands across the fabric of ellis's hat because not ready yet was two months ago and he ain't never seen him take the thing off since except to fix his bobby pins.

"just think you look good's'all." keith only mumbles cuz ellis's start of a smile is so close their mouths are up against each other light. else he'd say it louder.

\- - -

zoey goes shooting with her dad and then dress shopping with her dad and her mom approves of neither. her mom still says zoey with quotation marks around it. her mom still doesn't say zoey when she thinks her daughter can't hear. zoey goes shooting with her dad and imagines the paper target with the face of her shithead P.E. teacher. thinks of the locker rooms and it's bullseyes every time. zoey goes shooting with her dad the day she comes home. replaces her furniture back where it used to go in her childhood bedroom. replaces the target with that fucking college dean. zoey goes dress shopping in a kohl's that's spattered with gurgling pools of bile and being eaten by flames from the basement up. zoey goes shooting without her dad. 

\- - -

"coach! you go on this one when you was a little boy?!" ellis hollers, gestures at the brightly painted sign documenting the reign of a roller coaster that no longer stands.

they're the last four alive in maybe the whole state. the three kids don't even know his damn name. coach can't imagine what giving a fuck would look like, at this point.

"son, i never got to do that shit." he says. "and, yeah. i rode that thing a million times."

\- - -

it really is best. he thinks of it long before he's arcing molotovs that aim for dark sky and are swallowed again and again by a thousand rotten bones. he thinks of it as soon as he sees the first television report. bill dresses in full uniform and shines his only gun. it really is best. if he had died at twenty-four in combat or of gout and mildew in his festering apartment his family would have written his epitaph.

**Author's Note:**

>  _updated 1/12/2016_ w a different keith'n'ellis piece bc im messin around w things, i dunno
> 
>  _2/8/16_ a different nick piece too
> 
>  _3/7/16_ hi it's me again lmao pretty much another coach piece? idk


End file.
